With only a week to go before President Donald Trump's summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, the White House has yet to nail down what sort of access American reporters will receive. | Ahn Young-joon/AP Photo

When President Donald Trump meets with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore, it will mark the coming together of perhaps the world’s most sealed-off and press-hostile autocrat with a president who frequently rages against the media, all in a country known for its repressive views on free speech.

Needless to say, journalists are concerned over what access will be granted at the historic meeting.

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“These things are tightly scripted; they keep the press at arm's length,” said Washington Post reporter John Hudson, who was in Singapore last week covering the meetings between U.S. and North Korean officials to plan the summit. From the American side, Hudson said he expected the summit would be similar to other foreign trips by the president. “The X-factor,” he added, “of course is going to be North Korea.”

Another X-factor may be the host country. Last Wednesday, Hudson was chased out of a Singapore hotel by security guards after attempting to photograph and interview the officials who were meeting there. In his reporting so far, he said, he has not found any of the three countries particularly helpful.

“For these logistics meetings, there was zero support from any of the U.S., North Korean or Singaporean governments to provide additional access to the press,” Hudson said. The American delegation was accompanied by a small pool of media representatives, as is standard on these type of planning trips, but they would have only had limited access to the discussions. Hudson added that he was unsure whether his experiences last week indicated anything about next week’s planned summit.

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Jean H. Lee, a former Associated Press bureau chief in Pyongyang and a North Korea expert at the Wilson Center, put it this way: “It’s going to be a very interesting dance between the media and these two leaders who crave attention, but want to shape it and control it.”

With only a week to go, the White House has yet to nail down what sort of access American reporters will receive, and whether Trump or, more tantalizingly, Kim, will take questions from the media.

“We are still working on finalizing some details,” said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Under normal conditions, these types of arrangements are made weeks and months in advance, with meticulous planning. But nothing about the North Korea summit has gone according to any normal plan.

Complicating matters is the host country, which is one of the least hospitable to the media. According to Reporters Without Borders’ rankings of world press freedom, Singapore rates 151st out of 180 countries, and is known for censoring and suing reporters, the organization says. Meanwhile, North Korea comes in dead last in the rankings. Kim Jong Un, who has sealed off his country from the outside world and jails dissenters, has never given an interview to foreign media.

When the U.S. president meets with leaders of countries with dimmer views of free speech, the American role is typically to push for more openness. For instance, former President Barack Obama was heavily criticized in 2009 when he met with Chinese President Hu Jintao but failed to take questions alongside him. Obama was praised in 2014, though, when he insisted on an open press conference alongside President Xi Jinping. Trump was similarly knocked on his trip to China last fall when he did not take questions with Xi.

Some administrations push harder than others for access and opportunities to ask questions, said New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker. They do so, he said, “Mostly because it’s our tradition, but also because they see the value in having our press ask foreign leaders some questions, because we can put them on the record about things and push points that highlight areas of agreement or tension between the two.”

For the current White House, Baker said, “The record is mixed.” On some occasions the administration has pushed for reporters to gain access to rooms, while on others it has been less assertive, he said.

White House Correspondents’ Association president Margaret Talev said her group has been pressing for as much access as possible. “The WHCA is pushing for reporters to have the opportunity to observe and report as much as possible on this historic event, which is of major interest to the American public and people around the world, and for reporters to be able to ask questions of senior officials including the president,” she said in an email.

“It is important that Trump urge Kim Jong Un to respect press freedom,” said Margaux Ewen, executive director of Reporters Without Borders North America, in an email, “but in order to do that, Trump first has to fight for the White House press pool traveling with him to have the broadest possible access during the summit, otherwise any push he might make for North Korea to be more open will be insincere. The country of the First Amendment must lead by example.”

The summit between North and South Korea in April was tightly controlled, and may provide some clue to how things will go next week, said Lee, from the Wilson Center. “There was a very small number of media outlets allowed to join the South Korean president. The rest of the media were packed into a press center off-site,” she said.

Lee noted that Kim has been unpredictable, so having him take questions cannot be totally ruled out, though talking to foreign media would mark a massive change. For the American side, Lee said, “This would be an opportunity to press for more openness, but I think that President Trump is going to pick his battles.” She noted that Trump acknowledged not raising any human rights issues when he met with senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol last week.

Steven Butler, the Asia program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, agreed that the unpredictable North Korean regime “is a total wild card.” He added, though, that he does not expect Singapore’s restrictive views of the press to inhibit U.S. reporters.

“Singapore is hostile to journalists who write things about it that it doesn’t like. As far as staging an international conference is concerned, I don’t see why there would be any issues,” said Butler, a former longtime foreign correspondent in Asia who once reported from Singapore.

Hudson’s encounter with hotel security does not mark an auspicious start, though. The Post reporter had entered the Capella Singapore hotel last week in hopes of interviewing officials from both the U.S. and North Korea. He at first sat down at the bar to order an iced tea, and, when the opportunity arose, approached White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, with whom he had a brief but cordial conversation. After he snapped a few photos of the delegations, though, hotel security guards approached and asked him to turn over his phone.

“I’d be lying if I said I knew exactly how that was going to end up, and I was worried that it could end poorly,” Hudson said. “There was one point when the security guard threatened to call the police, and it was clear he was saying that because he wanted to coerce me into surrendering my phone.”

Hudson was able to walk out of the hotel — dogged by security — without handing over his phone. “They didn’t get physical, which is something I was also worried about,” he said. “Certainly they were not messing around in any sort of way. It was a bit startling.”

While the security guards were not Singaporean government employees, the incident speaks to the challenges of reporting in countries with fewer traditions around a free press.

Hudson said he is not yet sure whether he’ll be assigned to return to Singapore for the summit but said that reporters will likely be pushing for "everything from on-record press conferences to background briefings.”

“The Obama administration came under fire for whether or not they pushed foreign partners to allow for questions,” he said. “I think the Trump administration is going to be under scrutiny for the same thing.”